The genius of America’s marketing professionals often amazes me. Yesterday, for example, I walked past a display counter at a gardening boutique and noticed a heap of chicken poo for sale.

Now of course one expects to see manure offered for sale to gardeners. Organic fertilizer is popular, after all. What amazed me about that particular heap of chicken poo is that it didn’t look or smell like manure.

The stuff had been sanitized, deodorized, sterilized, pulverized and then pelletized into particles about the size and color of (I can’t resist.) bird shot. Pour it out on the counter, it looks like wheat germ or some sort of heat ‘n’ eat cereal.

The – ahem – product is neatly sealed in colorful, one kilogram (2.2 lb.) bags. The bags sport some spiffy cartoon illustrations, and they sell for $6.99 each. Chickity Doo Doo (as the stuff is called) is made by a company called R & J Partnership LLC, at N5505 Crossman Road, in Lake Mills, WI 53551.

A blurb on the bags touts a Web site: http://www.chickitydoodoo.com. I went home, powered up my computer, and paid them a visit. There I learned that Chickity Doo Doo comes in packages varying in size from one kilo to one ton. I also saw a guaranteed analysis of the product which reveals that Chickity Doo Doo is (among other things) 9 percent calcium.

That last point sold me. I decided to try Chickity Doo Doo because last year I lost my tomato crop to blossom-end rot, a disease often caused by a calcium deficiency in soil. And so today I say “Hooray!” for R & J Partnership, LLC. I don’t know anyone who works there, but it seems to me that only genius of a rare order could invent and successfully market upscale chicken poo.

Looking at the news this morning, I see that Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other Senate hacks are trying to revive their late, unlamented effort at immigration reform. Toward that end, reports have it, the hacks ask for help from the late, unlamented administration of President George W. Bush, D-Uh.

That makes no sense to me. I mean the hacks tried to pass their
immigration bill two weeks ago. The backlash from voters then nearly
drove the Senate out of Washington. Any senator who hopes to get
reelected, if he or she is sane, ought to see the attempted
resurrection of the dead immigration horse as a thoroughly rotten idea.
So why are they going to try again?

For his effort to push the immigration bill, George Bush forfeited
a fair-sized chunk of what little support he formerly retained.
Right-wing pundits and talk-radio hate merchants got all over the
president like ugly on an ape. Columnist and conservative icon Peggy
Noonan went so far as to brand Bush a fool and a wastrel, and she ended
by calling for other conservatives to dump what’s left of the Bush
presidency in the nearest ditch. So why would cow-Boy George stick his
head into that hornets’ nest again?

Some writers claim the Senate bill grants amnesty to roughly 12
million illegal aliens who already live and work in the U.S. It is said
that Democrats push the legislation because immigrants nearly all vote
Democrat in national elections and those 12 million new votes promise
Democrats a veto-proof majority in both houses of the next Congress.

If that’s true, it could explain why Democrats want the
legislation. But it makes absolutely no sense as an explanation of why
Bush and his Republicans would help Democrats do such a thing. Nor does
it explain why Democrats would ask George Bush for help, because any
piece of legislation that Bush endorses these days is bound to be
wildly unpopular.

Of late it is trendy among pundits to say of Bush that “the
emperor has no clothes.” In fact, the juices in which George Bush now
stews are much more toxic than the cliché implies. For it isn’t just
that Bush stands naked before the American people; it is rather that
Bush is naked and has no legs to stand on. Bush has lied to the
American people and been wrong so often about so much that America no
longer trusts him at all. If Bush was a cop, Americans would give him a
rubber gun with rubber bullets and a childproof safety, and then cuff
his hands to the nearest lamp-post. By and large, Americans think the
best thing – the only thing – this Congress can do with this president
is impeach the felonious twerp. Ask Bush to support legislation, you
ask him to bestow the kiss of death upon it.

So why would Democrats ask Bush for help? My guess is that they didn’t ask. My guess is there was a quid pro quo:
Democrats pledged untrammeled funding for the war in Iraq; Bush pledged
GOP support for the Democrats’ immigration package. If Bush can't or
won't now deliver his end of the deal, Democrats may at long last
decide to impeach him.

You can call that blackmail. You can call it whatever you like.
Curse me for a damned cynic. I don’t care. But if you’ve got a better
explanation for what’s going on, I’d really like to hear it. None of
the people who are close to the thing now talk the least bit of sense.

The end of it all is that I’ve got some good advice for anyone
who really wants to pass this so-called immigration reform bill: Put
the thing in a box, wrap it up tightly, and FedEx the package to R
& J Partnership LLC, N5505 Crossman Road, Lake Mills, WI 53551.
Folks out there will know how to process your legislation. They'll turn
it into something that has a little more market appeal than the stuff
you’re presently trying to sell, and they’ll do the deed, I’m sure, for
a lot less money than you’d have to pay those hifalutin K-Street
lobbyists.